31 October, 2015

The
newly released Soviet "War Scare" report - previously
classified "TOP SECRET UMBRA GAMMA WNINTEL NOFORN NOCONTRACT
ORCON" and published after a 12-year fight by the National
Security Archive – reveals that the 1983 War Scare was real.
According to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
(PFIAB), the United States "may have inadvertently placed our
relations with the Soviet Union on a hair trigger" during the
1983 NATO nuclear release exercise, Able Archer 83.

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The
documents prove that the "balance of terror" during the
Cold War was very fragile. The philosophy of the MAD (mutually
assured destruction), based on the theory of deterrence, might not
be sufficient to prevent a nuclear war.

According to
the theory of deterrence, "the threat of using strong weapons
against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The
strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which neither side, once
armed, has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction)

The
revelation also shows that the prevention of a nuclear war came not
as a result of a well-coordinated general strategy, or, effective
communication channels between the two Cold War rivals, but from the
reactions of specific individuals like Lieutenant General Leonard H.
Perroots!

From the
National Security Archive:

According
to documents reviewed by the Board and dissected in the
declassified PFIAB report, by 1983 "The Soviets had
concern that the West might decide to attack the USSR without
warning during a time of vulnerability…thus compelling the
Soviets to consider a preemptive strike at the first sign of US
preparations for a nuclear strike." To counter this
strike (which the West never intended to launch), Soviet leader
Yuri Andropov initiated Operation RYaN, the Soviet human
intelligence effort to detect and preempt a Western "surprise
nuclear missile attack."

Fortunately
"the military officers in charge of the Able Archer
exercise minimized this risk by doing nothing in the face of
evidence that parts of the Soviet armed forces were moving to an
unusual level of alert." The decision not to elevate
the alert of Western military assets in response was made by
Lieutenant General Leonard Perroots while serving as Assistant
Chief of Staff for Intelligence, US Air Forces Europe. The report
describes Perroots's decision as "fortuitous, if
ill-informed" and states that "these officers
acted correctly out of instinct, not informed guidance, for in the
years leading up to Able Archer they had received no guidance as
to the possible significance of apparent changes in Soviet
military and political thinking."

Perroots's
instinctual decision not to respond to the Soviet escalation in
kind –an act until now unknown– may have been what ended the
"last paroxysm of the Cold War," the 1983 War Scare.

Declassified
NATO and US Air Force documents have shown that the Able Archer 83
exercise included significant new provocative features, which
could have been misperceived by the Soviets as preparations for an
actual strike. These included: a 170-flight, radio-silent air
lift of 19,000 US soldiers to Europe during Autumn Forge 83, of
which Able Archer 83 was a component; the shifting of commands
from "Permanent War Headquarters to the Alternate War
Headquarters;" the practice of "new nuclear weapons
release procedures" including consultations with cells in
Washington and London; and the "sensitive, political issue"
of numerous "slips of the tongue" in which B-52 sorties
were referred to as nuclear "strikes."

The PFIAB
report reveals even more potential warning signs that could have
been misinterpreted by the Soviets, described as "special
wrinkles," including "pre-exercise communications
that notionally moved forces from normal readiness, through
various alert phases, to General Alert;" and that "some
US aircraft practiced the nuclear warhead handling procedures,
including taxiing out of hangars carrying realistic-looking dummy
warheads."

The
PFIAB report also shows that President Reagan learned about, and
reacted to, the danger of nuclear war through miscalculation.
After reading a June 19th 1984 memorandum from CIA Director
William Casey describing "a rather stunning array of
indicators" during the War Scare that added "a dimension
of genuineness to the Soviet expressions of concern," the
president "expressed surprise" and "described the
events as ‘really scary.'"

Months
earlier, Reagan was already concerned about Soviet fears. A week
after Able Archer 83's end, on November 18, 1983, the President
wrote in his journal, "George Shultz & I had a talk
mainly about setting up a little in house group of experts on the
Soviet U. to help us in setting up some channels. I feel the
Soviets are so defense minded, so paranoid about being attacked
that without being in any way soft on them we ought to tell them
that no one here has any intention of doing anything like that."

According
to the PFIAB, the US Intelligence Community's erroneous
reporting made the "especially grave error to
assume that since we know the US is not going to start World War
III, the next leaders of the Kremlin will also believe that."

Other
interesting elements from the revelation include "more
details on the primitive computer model the Soviets apparently used
to help determine if and when the US would launch a nuclear attack at
the USSR. This computer, developed by military and economic
specialists, consisted of a database of 40,000 weighted military,
political, and economic factors, including 'indicators' reported from
agents abroad. 'Before long,' the report states, the computer
'started spewing very unwelcome news:' that by 1984 Soviet power had
declined to just 45 percent of that of the United States."

A remarkable
coincidence(?), is that the same year, the film WarGames
was released, according to which a
young hacker who unwittingly accesses WOPR (War Operation Plan
Response), a United States military supercomputer programmed to
predict possible outcomes of nuclear war, gets WOPR to run a nuclear
war simulation, originally believing it to be a computer game. The
simulation causes a national nuclear missile scare and nearly starts
World War III.

The
big question naturally arise: are there any reliable mechanisms today
who could eliminate the possibility of a nuclear war? Are there any
communication channels between the US, Russia and China in the new
Cold War?

30 October, 2015

Journeys
of death for thousands of desperate people, situation beyond critical

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Another ten
refugees, including five children, were found dead on Thursday in the
sea area north of Lesvos. A little girl, one year old, was
hospitalized in intensive and died on Thursday night. It is still
unclear the number of people missing since the shipwreck on
Wednesday. Some sources speak for more than thirty people.

The total
number of victims of the shipwrecks in October 28th in Lesbos, Samos
and Agathonisi is eighteen, of which twelve are children. The lurid
list is constantly growing, while the images of children who are
struggling to stay alive haunt the divided Europe, which still
discuss the quotas of the number of refugees for each country.

On
Wednesday, the Greek coast guard managed to rescue more than 240
refugees from the shipwreck off coast Molyvos, Lesvos. The
authorities identified two children who were unconscious and
transported in critical condition to the hospital. The boy, aged six
years, died immediately, while the girl, one year old, ultimately
died on Thursday night, although doctors were able initially to keep
her alive .

Another two
children and a man were lost in a shipwreck at the Gatos headland in
Samos. An infant still missing. A five year old girl found dead in
Karlovasi, Samos. Two more men missing. In Agathonisi, two children
and one woman died, while a child still missing.

In 48 hours,
from Tuesday morning to Thursday morning, a total 925 refugees have
been rescued in 20 separate incidents in Lesvos, Chios, Samos and
Kos. More than 5,000 immigrants and refugees arrived in Mytilene in
the last 24 hours, despite the adverse weather, while executives of
the recording and certification center estimate that this figure may
even reach 6,000. Sources from the police station on the island say
that in the port of Mytilene remain 8,763 people who are expected to
leave in the coming hours to Piraeus and Kavala.

The shocking
pictures from Lesbos, are indicative of the drama that shakes the
region with unprecedented refugee crisis, stated Greek government
officials. They stressed that the Greek government continuously
taking steps for the hospitality of these people, identification and
their relocation. They also said that this struggle is also a
struggle for the highlighting of the humanitarian face of Europe.

Meanwhile, according to the UN refugee agency, refugee
and migrant arrivals in Greece are expected to hit the 400,000 mark
soon, despite adverse weather conditions. Greece remains by far the
largest single entry point for new sea arrivals in the Mediterranean,
followed by Italy with 131,000 arrivals so far in 2015.

With the new figures from Greece, the total number of
refugees and migrants crossing the Mediterranean this year is nearly
530,000. In September, 168,000 people crossed the Mediterranean, the
highest monthly figure ever recorded and almost five times the number
in September 2014.

Two more shipwrecks occurred at dawn today in the Dodecanese. Eighteen dead already, including at least nine children.

In the sea area between Kalolimnos and Kalymnos, coast guard pulled 14 bodies and rescued 138 people. Research is ongoing for missing persons, the exact number of them has not been identified.

At the same time, in the sea area north of the port of Rhodes, a coast guard vessel has collected six refugees and three dead, three others missing. Today's incidents come as a continuation of shipwrecks that occurred off Lesvos.

Children unconscious in the arms of their parents fought to stay alive. Eleven people lost their lives, among them four children. 242 people were rescued and 40 still missing.

Too little
has been done to safeguard citizens' fundamental rights following
revelations of electronic mass surveillance, say MEPs in a resolution
voted on Thursday. They urge the EU Commission to ensure that all
data transfers to the US are subject to an "effective level of
protection" and ask EU member states to grant protection to
Edward Snowden, as a "human rights defender". Parliament
also raises concerns about surveillance laws in several EU countries.

By 285 votes
to 281, MEPs decided to call on EU member states to "drop any
criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and
consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in
recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human
rights defender".

Parliament
is concerned about "recent laws in some member states that
extend surveillance capabilities of intelligence bodies",
including in France, the UK and the Netherlands. It is also worried
by revelations of mass surveillance of telecommunications and
internet traffic inside the EU by the German foreign intelligence
agency BND in cooperation with the US National Security Agency (NSA).

Bidhya Devi
Bhandari is 54 years old and has been a champion of women’s rights
and led protests that ended the centuries-old Nepalese monarchy.

Bidhya Devi
Bhandari made history in Nepal. She has become the first women to
rule the country. But that's not all. She is a communist who has been
campaigning for a very long time in favor of women's rights.

She has
risen to power Wednesday after her Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML)
party garnered 327 votes in parliament against her opponent's 214.

Bhandari is
among the politicians who pushed to secure their rights under the new
constitution adopted last month that requires that a new president be
named.

The
communist female leader became a leading political figure after her
husband, Madan Bhandari, was killed in a car accident in 1993, which
has remained mostly unexplained as circumstances surrounding the
incident are dubious. He was the leader of the communist party.

Bhandari has
now become only the second president since the Himalayan country
became a republic after ending the centuries-old monarchy.

Over the
last two presidential debates, both Democratic and Republican
candidates have asserted that the television news media is biased and
has done a poor job informing voters of the most pressing issues in
the election.

And while
their focus is on things like the type of questions asked by debate
moderators, they are overlooking much clearer signs of potential
conflicts of interest. Fundraising disclosures released this month
and in July reveal that lobbyists for media companies are raising big
money for establishment presidential candidates, particularly Hillary
Clinton.

The giant
media companies that shape much of the coverage of the presidential
campaign have a vested stake in the outcome. From campaign finance
laws that govern how money is spent on advertising to the regulators
who oversee consolidation rules, the media industry has a distinct
policy agenda, and with it, a political team to influence the result.

The top
fundraisers for Clinton include lobbyists who serve the parent
companies of CNN and MSNBC.

The National
Association of Broadcasters, a trade group that represents the
television station industry, has lobbyists who are fundraising for
both Clinton and Republican candidate Marco Rubio.

Presidential
campaigns are obligated by law to send the Federal Election
Commission a list of lobbyists who serve as “bundlers,”
collecting hundreds of individual checks on behalf of a candidate’s
campaign.

“One of the direct answers on
why Bernie Sanders won't get elected, is because Wall Street would
not let him get elected. [...] In the current structure that we do
have, of this two party system, he is not electable because the
rich bankers and so forth, media apparatuses, will not allow him
to go any further. They will demonize him ... it will feel like
Hillary Clinton is the only possibility.”

29 October, 2015

Chinese Vice
Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui summoned U.S. Ambassador to China Max
Baucus on Tuesday, lodging "serious representations" and
expressing "strong discontent" over a U.S. warship patrol
in waters near China's Nansha Islands in the South China Sea. "This
action by the United States threatens China's sovereignty and
security interests and endangers the safety of personnel and
facilities on the reef, which is a serious provocation," Zhang
said.

Earlier on
Tuesday, USS Lassen entered waters near Zhubi Reef without the
permission of the Chinese government.

Zhang noted
that it had done so regardless of China's earlier dissuasion. China
is "strongly discontented with and firmly against" the
move, he said. The vice foreign minister reiterated China's claim of
sovereignty over the Nansha Islands and its adjacent waters, on the
basis that China discovered, named and developed them. "The
Chinese government will resolutely safeguard territorial sovereignty
and legal sea interests, and China will do whatever necessary to
oppose deliberate provocation from any country," he warned.

Denying that
China's activity in the South China Sea will restrict freedom of
navigation and overflight in accordance with international law, Zhang
said China will nevertheless oppose any country infringing upon its
sovereignty and security in the name of the freedom. "There has
been and will be no obstruction to navigation and overflight freedom
in the South China Sea," he said, labeling the U.S. move "a
show of force that is very likely to trigger an accident, threatening
the rights of navigation and overflight shared by all countries, and
harming peace and stability in the South China Sea." The United
States should remember its commitment that it would take no position
on territorial disputes, Zhang added.

On Tuesday
evening, China's Ministry of National Defense also criticized the USS
Lassen's foray as likely to "seriously harm mutual trust"
between the two armed forces.

28 October, 2015

The
same government which was rejected in the recent elections, will be
presented by the center-Right Coelho despite that he has not the
majority in the new parliament. The Left and the Socialists are
expected to vote against.

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The same
government which was rejected by the majority of the Portuguese
people in the 4th October elections, was presented by the
center-Right Pedro Passos Coelho, to the President of Portugal Aníbal
Cavaco Silva, despite that he has not the necessary majority to be
supported in the new Portuguese parliament.

Maria Luís
Albuquerque keeps her position as Minister of State and Finance,
whilePaulo
Portas, the leader of CDS-PP and government partner until now, is
being proposed as vice-president of the government.

It should be
noted that in ten days, the proposed governmental scheme should
receive motion of confidence from the parliament, in which Coelho's
party lacks the majority.

At the same
time, intense pressure is exercised on the Socialist party which has
stated that will vote against, together with the two Leftist parties
(Left Bloc and Communist Party).

Coelho calls
Socialists in a dialogue by pointing the danger of economic collapse,
at the same time when Cavaco Silva has stated that a Leftist
government would be harmful for the relations between Portugal and
the European Union.

Note that,
the center-Right hopes that nine MPs could abandon the Socialist
wing, in order to take the majority in the parliament. However,
according to various analysts, this is extremely unlikely to be
reached.

It is
impressive that the same arguments were used by the systemic
establishment in Greece, when the Leftist party SYRIZA was
threatening the dominance of the two-party system PASOK and New
Democracy who were completely connected to the Brussels-Berlin
neoliberal agenda.

The
mainstream media and various MPs of the establishment were
circulating catastrophic scenarios, among them, the breakup of the
relations with NATO and European Union and the isolation of Greece.

Finally, the
Brussels-Berlin axis managed to defeat Tsipras and get rid of the "dangerous" radicals of his
party, as planned. Tsipras
was forced to sign a third catastrophic memorandum, according to the
neoliberal experiment.

The United States has launched a
reckless military provocation against China by sending a naval vessel
within the 12-nautical mile limit surrounding islands claimed by
China in the South China Sea.

Early today [27/10], local time,
the guided missile destroyer USS Lassen entered the exclusion zone
around the Chinese-occupied and claimed Subi and Mischief reefs in
the Spratly archipelago. China has reclaimed land from the sea and
constructed facilities on the reefs. The USS Lassen was accompanied
by a P-8A surveillance plane and a P-3 surveillance aircraft.
According to US sources, China was not informed and no incident
occurred.

The brazen and aggressive
character of the operation is underscored by the fact that it has
been undertaken in the total absence of military activity against the
US by China. Rather, it assumes the form of a pre-emptive strike
aimed at humiliating the Chinese regime and placing it in a situation
where it either confronts the US navy or bows down to Washington’s
repudiation of China’s decades-old territorial claims in the
strategic South China Sea. Not coincidentally, the operation was
announced just as a major meeting of the ruling Chinese Communist
Party central committee was convening to consider economic policy
over the next five years.

According to an unnamed US defense
department official, who provided a briefing on the operation, the
deployment of the USS Lassen is not a one-off, but the start of a
series of provocations.

The US actions vastly raise the
threat of a military clash with China and the danger of a war between
nuclear-armed states that would draw in every country in the region
and beyond. A senior Chinese naval officer declared earlier this
month that any forces violating Chinese sovereignty would be met with
a “head on blow.” On October 9, the Chinese foreign ministry
warned that China would “never allow any country to violate China’s
territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands in the name of
protecting freedom of navigation and overflight.”

The
Intercept has obtained a cache of secret documents detailing the
inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in
Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The documents, provided by a
whistleblower, offer an unprecedented glimpse into Obama’s drone
wars.

Manhunting
in the Hindu Kush

Key
points:

...
the Haymaker campaign was in many respects a failure. The vast
majority of those killed in airstrikes were not the direct targets.
Nor did the campaign succeed in significantly degrading al Qaeda’s
operations in the region.

The
documents show that during a five-month stretch of the campaign,
nearly nine out of 10 people who died in airstrikes were not the
Americans’ direct targets. By February 2013, Haymaker airstrikes
had resulted in no more than 35 “jackpots,” a term used to
signal the neutralization of a specific targeted individual, while
more than 200 people were declared EKIA — “enemy killed in
action.”

“If
there is no evidence that proves a person killed in a strike was
either not a MAM [military-age male], or was a MAM but not an
unlawful enemy combatant, then there is no question,” he said.
“They label them EKIA.” In the case of airstrikes in a
campaign like Haymaker, the source added, missiles could be fired
from a variety of aircraft. “But nine times out of 10 it’s a
drone strike.”

Firing a missile at a target in a
group of people, the source said, requires “an even greater leap
of faith” — a leap that he believes often treats physical
proximity as evidence.

“Every mission that’s triggered begins as an
objective to find one person for whatever reason,” the source
said, adding, “Every jackpot is one person off the list.”

He
[Larry Lewis, formerly a principal research scientist at the Center
for Naval Analyses] found that drone strikes in
Afghanistan were 10 times more likely to kill civilians than
conventional aircraft. “We
assume that they’re surgical but they’re not,”
Lewis said in an interview. “Certainly
in Afghanistan, in the time frame I looked at, the
rate of civilian casualties was significantly higher for unmanned
vehicles than it was for manned aircraft airstrikes. And that was a
lot higher than raids.”

... the U.S. conducted more than
1,800 “night ops” at a time when President Hamid Karzai was
calling for an end to American involvement in controversial night
raids. Of those operations — which resulted in 1,239 targets
captured or killed and 709 “associates” of targets captured or
killed — the military reported “shots fired” in less than 9
percent of its missions, with a total of 14 civilian casualty
“events” for the year.

One of the Salafists pictured was Haji Matin, a timber
trader from the Korengal Valley. In the early years of the war, one
of Matin’s business rivals wrongly fingered him as a militant to
the Americans. U.S. forces responded by bombing Matin’s home.
While Matin survived, several members of his family were killed. The
Americans then appropriated one of his lumberyards as an outpost,
thus turning one of the most powerful men in the area into a
formidable insurgent leader. The transformation of men like Matin
and the Salafists, once locally minded powerbrokers, into anti-U.S.
fighters, was hardly unique.

After nearly a decade of war, thousands of operations,
and thousands of deaths, some within the special operations
community began to question the quality of the United States’
targets in Afghanistan. “By 2010, guys were going after street
thugs,” a former SEAL Team 6 officer told the New York Times
recently. “The most highly trained force in the world, chasing
after street thugs.” Concerns that the U.S. was devoting
tremendous resources to kill off a never-ending stream of nobodies
did little to halt the momentum.

The hunting and killing
operations relied on advanced technology to zero in on targets,
including the cellphone geolocation system known as GILGAMESH. As
The Intercept reported in 2014, the GILGAMESH system employs a
simulated cellphone tower to identify and locate targeted SIM cards.

The documents indicate that U.S. forces launched just
one airstrike as part of the Haymaker campaign in the early months
of 2012, killing two people. In May 2012, however, the tempo of
operations picked up dramatically, an increase that coincided with a
strategic shift in Afghanistan emanating from the White House. As
the military’s focus shifted to hunting down specific targets from
2011 to 2012, drone strikes in Afghanistan increased by 72 percent.

The
scores of unnamed people killed in the hunt for jackpots, and the
intelligence opportunities lost by failing to capture targets alive,
do not appear to factor into the calculation. The apparent success
rate, in other words, depends solely on killing jackpots, and
ignores the strategic — and human — consequences of killing
large numbers of bystanders.

The
deaths of just over half the individuals were noted in NATO’s
press releases or media reports.

Kinetic strikes, the slide reported, “successfully
killed one [al Qaeda] target per year,” allowing the organization
to “easily” reconstitute. [...] Haymaker’s impact on al Qaeda
and Taliban enablers in Kunar and Nuristan was “considered
temporary without a long-term, persistent campaign.”

... Afghan military forces were barred from calling in
U.S. airstrikes for support on missions. The order followed an
operation in Kunar in which NATO and Afghan forces were blamed for
the deaths of 10 civilians —
including one man, four women, and five children. In
2012, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan had documented a number of
other incidents involving civilian
deaths resulting from U.S. operations, including a raid that left
seven civilians dead, an “aerial attack” that killed seven
children and one adult, and a drone strike targeting “two
insurgents” that killed a teenage girl.

... Haymaker coincided with an
increase in drone strikes and civilian casualties across
Afghanistan. By the end of 2013, the U.N. reported the number of
civilian casualties from drone strikes in Afghanistan had tripled
from 2012, with “almost one-third of the civilian deaths from
aerial operations” reported in Kunar, the heart of the Haymaker
campaign.

Records of condolence payments
disbursed by the U.S. military, obtained by The Intercept, show more
than $118,000 distributed in 45 disbursements to Kunar in fiscal
years 2011 through 2013. In addition to numerous injuries, the
payments also cover the deaths of 27 people, including at least four
children. The records do not indicate whether the incidents were
linked to the Haymaker campaign or whether they were the result of
mistaken ground raids or airstrikes.

Unleashed in the early morning
hours of October 3, in the province of Kunduz, the U.S. attack
killed at least a dozen members of the
humanitarian group’s medical staff and 10 patients, including
three children. A nurse on the scene recalled seeing
six victims in the intensive care unit ablaze in their beds. “There
are no words for how terrible it was,” the nurse said. MSF
denounced the strike as a war crime and demanded an independent
investigation.

After nearly a decade and a half
of war, more than 2,300 American lives
lost, and an estimated 26,000 Afghan civilians killed,
the nature of combat in Afghanistan is entering a new, potentially
bloodier, phase. In August, the United Nations reported that
civilian casualties in Afghanistan “are projected to equal or
exceed the record high numbers documented last year.” While
most civilian casualties in the first half of 2015 were attributed
to “anti-government” forces, 27 deaths and 22 injuries were
attributed to airstrikes “by international military forces,” a
23 percent increase over last year, most of them, unlike the air
raid in Kunduz, carried out by drones.

Despite the rise in civilian
casualties and the well-documented failure of drone strikes to
achieve the military’s broader objectives, there is every
indication that unmanned airstrikes will play an increasing role in
U.S. military engagement in Afghanistan, as they have in war zones
across the world.

Deutsche
Bank considers the possibility of a haircut of Greece’s public debt
by the end of the year ‘inevitable’, according to a report in
German tabloid Bild.

The
newspaper cites a classified Deutsche Bank internal circulation
document which allegedly states that the Greek debt must be reduced
by about 200 billion euros. This turns out to about 700 euros for
each citizen in the Eurozone, states Bild.

The report
further notes that by the end of 2015 Greece’s public debt will be
340 billion euros, 200 percent of GDP, far more than what European
regulations allow. This, in turn, means that no economist truly
believes Greece will be able to repay its debts.

The tabloid
however adds that should a haircut of the Greek debt be deemed
necessary, the decision to carry it out will be less of a financial
one and more of a political one, and it will be made after
negotiations between Athens and creditors.

This means
that each European would have to pay (again) an additional amount of
700 euros for the banksters, since we should not forget that
"creditors had been acting in bad faith, knowingly burdening
the country with unsustainable loans to save French, German and Greek
private banks." (fa.ev/a-brief-description-of-financial-war)

Greek people
have paid, and still pay the banksters with cuts in pensions, wages,
labor rights. Another banking re-capitalization is about to be
imposed by the creditors at the same time when they demand more cuts
and austerity.

27 October, 2015

“Meanwhile
in Portugal we are witnessing the makings of a genuine coup with the
unwillingness of the establishment there to accept the outcome of an
election and the support won by parties who oppose EU austerity.”

Gerry
Adams, Sinn Féin, Oct 24, 2015

This is the
truest form of Euro authoritarianism, short of full prisons and
torture chambers. (These may, in time, come.) If you are not seized
by the idea, the fetishism of a currency; if you gather up your
forces to mount an offence against austerity, twinned as it with
monetary union, then you must be, in the eyes of these policing
forces, against the European project.

This obscene
inversion has found form in Portugal, yet another country that has
taken the road towards anti-democratic practice when it comes to the
battle between the outcome of staged elections and the heralded
inviolability of a broken euro system. It has the chill of history –
political groupings with a certain number of votes barred because of
supposedly radical tendencies. It has also received scant coverage in
certain presses, with a few notable examples, such as Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard’s observation that the country had “entered
dangerous political waters.”

First, the
mathematics of the election held on October 4. The combined Left bloc
won 50.7 percent of the vote (122 seats), while the conservative
premier, Pedro Passos Coehlo’s Right-wing coalition gained 38.5
percent – a loss of 28 seats. One would have to be a rather brave
and foolish individual to let the latter form government.

This, in
fact, is what Aníbal Cacavo Silva, the country’s constitutional
president, did. “In the 40 years of democracy, no government in
Portugal has ever depended on the support of anti-European forces,
that is to say forces that campaigned to abrogate the Lisbon Treaty,
the Fiscal Compact, the Growth and Stability Pact, as well as to
dismantle monetary union and take Portugal out of the euro, in
wanting the dissolution of NATO.”

The
statement hits upon a definition of the European project, if you can
call it that, linked to bound, self-interested market structures and
the virtues of military defence. Cavaco Silva evidently cannot
conceive that a European project could involve a variation of the
theme, let alone one averse to dogmas of austerity and the bank.

The
Socialists, under António Costa, have promised Keynesian reflation
policies with expenditures on education and health, a policy platform
very much at odds with the EU’s Fiscal Compact.

So much, in
that sense, for the legacy of the Carnation Revolution, which saw
Portugal’s post-Salazar normalisation. It was that generally
peaceful revolution that oversaw the demise of the Estada Novo,
António de Oliveira Salazar’s corporatist vision that shares, in
some perverse sense, similarities with the anti-democratic spirit of
EU market governance. Bolting from those same stables, Cavaco Silva
insists that the European left, and specifically the parties in
Portugal, are somehow against Europe, parochial and therefore
dangerous. The reverse, in fact, is the case.

The clue in
Cavaco Silva’s erroneous thoughts on where a pan-European idea lies
in his total faith in the market, corporate ideal. It is not the
language of voters and public investment here that counts, but the
ghostly forces of capital and private investment. The investors, the
financiers, and the bankers must be kept in clover – or the entire
country and by virtue of that, the EU, unravels.

“This
is the worst moment for a radical change to the foundations of our
democracy. After we carried out an onerous programme of financial
assistance, entailing heavy sacrifices, it is my duty, within my
constitutional powers, to do everything possible to prevent false
signals being sent to financial institutions, investors and markets.”

In point of
fact, the most radical tendency in history is the illusion that
democracy and the market do, in fact, have a relationship that
corresponds, rather than jars. In truth, democracy can only ever
survive when markets are controlled. The European financiers have
given the impression, manifested through the ideology of the Troika,
that the estranged European Union is democratic only because it has
such institutions as a single currency, or a tough austerity line.

The Greek
crisis showed this entire process to be a grim sham, with Athens now
a client state mortgaged to the hilt and contained by debt bondage.
This happened after Syriza won power in January with a platform that
seemed, at first, to be wholly against austerity. Sovereignty is
short changed, while the finance sector counts its gains.

The entire
context of such revolt in finance is permissiveness towards
reactionary, nationalist elements. This is the paradox of having a
supposedly flexible market that encourages the ease of liquidity in
the absence of stable social structures. Historically, the forces of
capital and finance permit a degree of nationalism and extremism as
long as the money sector comes good. The liquidity tends to stay put.

The
Portuguese example has become the most overt statement of this so
far, though the Left grouping promise to block and scuttle the
proposed four-year policy programme of the minority administration
when the assembly resumes.

Till the two
points meet – the pro-European left inspired by
Keynesian-buttressed sovereignty, and the anti-democratic
institutions that have held the European idea hostage – the notion
of a workable euro zone will disintegrate. It will become, instead, a
geographical area populated by authoritarian governments who see
elections as mere pantomimes.

So now here
we are: the new Tsipras government has just resolved two of its major
problems: that of the public debt and the one represented by the
ex-president of the Greek Parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou. How has it
managed to bring off this feat? Simple! By erasing from the official
site of the Greek Parliament – for all time – everything that
could recall Zoe Konstantopoulou and her initiatives during her brief
presidency, including the Commission for the Truth of the Public
Debt.

Faced with
this impressive back-turn by the Greek government which takes us back
to the glories of Stalinism’s triumphant years in the ’30s but
also of Macarthyism at its most intrusive in the early ’50s, we are
entitled to ask: Does all this mean that Greece’s public debt has
disappeared? And has Zoe K. accepted her defeat then, and decided to
stop telling the truth and to silence her criticism of the vitriol
thrown at her?

The answer
is No. Greece’s astronomical public debt pursues its relentless
course as ever. Zoe K. refuses to concede defeat. So there is a
question to answer. In view of the fact that the attempt to clear the
Parliamentary website of unwanted presences clearly lacks efficiency,
why has the successor to Zoe K. and his friends proceeded in this
manner? What were they really after?

The only
possible answer is that, in acting like this, all those fine people
wanted to send a message or rather a signal to someone. To who? Well,
obviously, to the famous “European partners” with which the new
Greek authorities have just reached a deal: an agreement which is at
the same time … the sole program of the Tsipras government. But
also, to those from below of the Greek society – to make sure they
no longer have the slightest doubt as to the inevitability that any
resistance to the Memoranda and its instigators will be crushed.

In sum, it
was a highly symbolic act which aimed to do no more and no less than
once and for all clear the collective memory of the Greek people not
only of any trace of an alternative to the Memoranda policy, but also
even of the name of the person who was the very embodiment of this
alternative!

In reality,
the ruthlessness of these neophytes of neo-liberalism in fighting
what could be called their bad conscience is not limited to taking
away everything that reminded one of Zoe K’s brief presidency. By
going one further, and erasing also the appeal given out by the
international campaign to “support to the Commission for the Truth
of the Public Debt and the Right of Peoples to Audit the Public
Debts” the sorcerer’s apprentices of the Stalinist school of
falsification wanted to remove any trace of these 24,423 men and
women from all four corners of the earth, who have – up to this
time because the collection of signatures continues – shown their
active support for this campaign! In doing this, they have only
demonstrated that one thing: their total disregard for these
thousands of progressive people, including at least 2000 university
professors and economists, who want to do no more than support Greece
against its executioners!

The
predilection of the leaders of this genetically modified Syriza for
the very worst of administrative methods should not be a surprise. In
fact, well before their spectacular capitulation, they were already
making violent and vulgar attacks on the Commission for the Truth of
the Public Debt through their specialized dirty jobs media without so
much as daring to criticize it publicly or to give reasons. In fact,
up to the present moment you would look in vain for the slightest
argument out of their mouths against the Citizens’ Audit of Public
Debt.

On the
contrary, these cowards have always preferred low blows to public
confrontation. Cynical and armed with the arrogance of power, they
allow themselves to boot out tens of thousands of people who have
signed the appeal to support the audit Commission, people who are of
no use to them seeing as these illustrious mediocrities feel
comfortable only in the company of the ‘great ones’ of this
world. What Jorge Semprun said of Santiago Carrillo is just what
applies perfectly well to them: all his life he did only one thing,
enter in the big salons.

Living as
they do in a state of permanent insecurity and discovering enemies
even where there are only activists who ask questions, it is not so
surprising that these followers of a second hand Machiavelli recall
the worst Stalinist traditions to annihilate everything that bothers
them. Deprived – luckily – of the means at Uncle Joe’s disposal
in his time, they content themselves with simply erasing all
witnesses to their betrayals and other sins – on the model of
Stalinist inquisitors who in their millions caused lives, names and
even the faces of their Soviet compatriots to vanish without trace. A
telling detail: as once in Moscow, now also in Athens, these
inquisitors are giving first priority to annihilating those who dare
to deny the genetic modification of their party and persist in
standing up for themselves: … communists, anti-capitalists and
radical critics of the established order! …

Our
conclusion is optimistic: It will take much more than the “cleansing”
of the Greek Parliament site, and even much more than the relentless
smear campaign and the dirtiest of blows to destroy resistance to
those who have sold their soul to the neoliberal devil by agreeing to
apply his inhumane policies. Even in very difficult conditions, the
struggle continues as it is now a question of defending all that is
most precious: our dignity and our very survival.

...
the propaganda seemed to be effective to a certain degree,
concerning specific people. From a point and after, the media
concentrated not to SYRIZA as a whole, but to the 'systemic
threats' like Panagiotis Lafazanis, Zoe
Konstantopoulou,
Yanis Varoufakis and Costas Lapavitsas. Many of them joined
Popular Unity later.

Generally,
the media tried to "decompose" these people to the
voters, as being totally unreliable, or, even having specific
"behavioral" problems in some cases. All the "parades"
of these people to the mainstream media had only such a purpose.
It is something that the US media are doing right now, more or
less, with Bernie Sanders, probably through a more sophisticated
way.

The
case of Zoe Konstantopoulou is characteristic. From the first
moment as Speaker of the Hellenic Parliament, she took very
important initiatives, concerning the investigation of big
scandals under previous (PASOK – New Democracy) governments, as
well as, the audit of public debt through the Debt
Truth Committee.
However, the corrupted media of the local oligarchs tried to
manufacture ridiculous stories against her, in order to distract
the Greek public from these important initiatives.

It is a bad
day for those innocents on the Left who think that the European Union
can be transformed from within, turned into an instrument of the
peoples’ will and a motor for social progress, public ownership,
popular sovereignty or even pluralist democracy.

For the
first time since the monetary union was created parties that oppose
the EU regime of privatisation, labour market deregulation and the
fiscal straitjacket have been prevented from taking office even
though they enjoy a parliamentary majority.

On the
grounds of “national interest” Anibal Cavaco Silva, president of
Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused to allow the
appointment a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured
an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament on an anti
austerity mandate imposed by the EU-IMF Troika.

The
Socialists, Communists and left Bloc together won 50.7% of the votes
and control the Assembly. The biggest party grouping, led by Pedro
Passos Coelho gained only 38.5% losing 28 seats but was given the
first chance of forming a government.

Over the
next six months, Barcelona’s left-wing city council plans to roll
out a cash-less local currency that has the potential to become the
largest of its kind in the world. The main goal of the project,
according to a council spokesperson, is to boost economic
opportunities for local businesses and traders.

The idea is
for local stores and residents to be able to exchange euros for the
new currency at a one-to-one parity, and use it to purchase products
and services at a discount or with other kinds of incentives. But it
doesn’t end there: the new parallel currency may also be used to
pay certain subsidies, taxes and local services such as public
transport, reports El País. Municipal workers could also receive
part of their salary in the new money.

Barcelona
will not be the first European city to launch such a scheme. Local
currencies are all the rage these days. There could be as many as
3,000 forms of local money in use around the globe, says Community
Currencies in Action, a global partnership promoting such schemes
that is part-funded by the European Union’s Regional Development
Fund. Which begs the question…

26 October, 2015

The
European Financial Dictatorship showed further signs of panic in
Portugal this time. After the significant loss of power of the
neoliberal Right in recent national elections, a constitutional coup
took place in order to prevent the anti-austerity forces of the Left
to form a government.

From
Telegraph:

Constitutional
crisis looms after anti-austerity Left is denied parliamentary
prerogative to form a majority government.

Portugal
has entered dangerous political waters. For the first time since
the creation of Europe’s monetary union, a member state has
taken the explicit step of forbidding eurosceptic parties from
taking office on the grounds of national interest.

Anibal
Cavaco Silva, Portugal’s constitutional president, has refused
to appoint a Left-wing coalition government even though it secured
an absolute majority in the Portuguese parliament and won a
mandate to smash the austerity regime bequeathed by the EU-IMF
Troika.

He
deemed it too risky to let the Left Bloc or the Communists come
close to power, insisting that conservatives should soldier on as
a minority in order to satisfy Brussels and appease foreign
financial markets.

Democracy
must take second place to the higher imperative of euro rules and
membership.

It
is worth to remember the coup against Greece, directly by the
European Financial Dictatorship mechanisms, as described clearly by
the former Speaker of the Greek Parliament, Zoe Konstantopoulou in
her speech at the United Nations at the Fourth World Conference of
Speakers of Parliament:

On
June 25th, a 48 hour ultimatum was addressed to the Greek
government asking it to accept, contrary to popular mandate, a
series of measures dismantling labour law, abolishing social
security guarantees and legal protection for over-indebted
citizens, while at the same time requiring the sell-out of the
most precious public assets and public enterprises, but also major
ports, airports and public infrastructure.

All to be
sold or given away to repay an unsustainable and odious debt. The
Hellenic Parliament, accepted the Government’s proposal to hold
a referendum on the ultimatum, and the Greek people, through a
large majority of 62%, rejected the measures.

During
the referendum week, international and foreign government
officials tried to influence the referendum outcome through
statements terrorizing the people.

The
referendum was held with the banks closed and capital controls
imposed as a result for the ECB’s refusal to provide liquidity
after the proclamation of the referendum.

And yet,
democracy prevailed. The people pronounced themselves clearly and
said a 62% NO to those homicidal measures.

What
followed is a nightmare for every democratic conscience and a
disgrace.

The
creditors refused to consider the referendum outcome. They
insisted, under the threat of provoking a bank-failure and a
humanitarian disaster, that measures harsher than those rejected
be adopted.

The
Brussels-Berlin axis finally marked a Pyrrhic victory against
Tsipras, while managed to get rid of SYRIZA's dangerous radicals. In case of Portugal, the
local pro-euro puppets didn't hesitate to abolish constitutional
order, obviously because they didn't want to risk a Leftist coalition
which might resist against catastrophic policies. Therefore,
democracy is officially terminated by the European Financial
Dictatorship.

This
is another sign of a downgraded Europe, which is unable to retain its
principles and Democratic values. Its inability to find a viable
solution to the refugee problem, make things worse. This is the image
of an increasingly repulsive Europe for its citizens.

These
are signs of a dictatorship which tries hardly to keep its power. The
next big battle will be the Spanish elections. What will happen in
case that the euro-puppets dare to proceed in another coup if the
traditional neoliberal powers lose much of their strength?

Meanwhile,
the Icelanders are giving lessons to the bankster-dominated European
Financial Dictatorship called eurozone, and the bankster-dominated
empire called United States:

“In
two separate Icelandic Supreme Court and Reykjavik District Court
rulings, five top bankers from Landsbankinn and Kaupping — the two
largest banks in the country — were found guilty of market
manipulation, embezzlement, and breach of fiduciary duties. Most of
those convicted have been sentenced to prison for two to five years.
The maximum penalty for financial crimes in Iceland is six years,
although their Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments to
consider expanding sentences beyond the six year maximum.”
(fa.ev/things-never-happen-in-efd-us)

Note
that Iceland is not part of the eurozone, not even part of the
European Union.